Even with the recent challenges faced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it still provides the role model for global panels, such as for biodiversity and food security. We believe that a formailzed approach to expert advice in the area of biodiversity and ecosystem services must look beyind the IPCC model.

The Leipzig effort has centered on two international workshops that brought together different group of actors involved in political negotiations and outstanding scholars from different scholarly disciplines and backgrounds. Here is a brief summary, with links to further information:

•In October 2006, a group of highly experienced scientists and practitioners argued that the blueprint suitability of previous assessments for biodiversity governance is very limited because the task, the information needs, nature of the issue at stake and the political contexts mainly differ from former assessments.

First, the group argued a need to move beyond conventional scientific knowledge assessments which legitimizes, almost exclusively, only peer-reviewed material. We need plural and conditional knowledge emerging from multiple sites and processes of knowledge production.

Second is the need to link IPBES assessment results to nested levels of decision-making at multiple spatial scales (including tackling biodiversity loss ‘on the ground’)

These novel challenges have to be reflected by novel procedures and the governance structures. Provision must be made, for nested, decentralized, largely autonomous sub-global networks, activities, focused on the needs of specific actors in specific decision-making contexts and on enhancing the empowerment of local communities to contribute meaningfully to global policymaking.